Jade Song. Illustration: Maanvi Kapur
2023
Other Books Highlights From This Year III
Throughout the year, Vulture maintained a “Best Books of the Year (So Far)” list. Many of those selections appear above in our top-ten. Below, the rest of the books that stood out to them this year, presented in order of release date.
Ascension, by Nicholas Binge
When a mountain that’s taller than Everest by a good 10,000 feet appears in the middle of the Pacific Ocean overnight, physicist Harold Tunmore is one of a handful of experts recruited for a top-secret summiting expedition. But the secrecy around the operation and the mountain itself raise more unsettling questions. This isn’t the first group to attempt the climb — the previous group’s sole survivor was Harold’s estranged wife Naoko, who is no longer entirely attached to reality. They’re not far out of base camp when Harold starts seeing events from the past and future playing out in front of him on the icy crags and the climbers are beset by horrific, tentacled beasts and strange portals through space and time. The further they climb, the more Harold gets the sense that he is no longer himself, but the need to reach the summit becomes more overpowering by the hour. Perfect for readers who loved Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life, or Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, Ascension is thrilling, breathlessly paced, and poses thorny questions about time, fate, grief, and the nature of the self. Is it the accomplishment that makes us human or the quest? —E.H.